A mainframe computer may be viewed as a central processor complex (CPC), which is a physical collection of hardware that consists of main storage, one or more central processors, timers, and channels.
Enterprises and organizations often rely on mainframe computers for their computing needs, for example, for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and transaction processing. Instead of maintaining their own mainframe computer installations, the enterprises and organizations (hereinafter “mainframe customers”) may get a license to run software products or applications utilizing processing capacity in a mainframe computer installation or environment maintained by an external vendor.
A logical partition, commonly called an LPAR, is a subset of a computer's hardware resources (e.g., processors, memory, and storage), virtualized as a separate computer. In effect, a physical mainframe computer can be partitioned into multiple logical partitions, each hosting a separate operating system instance. A mainframe computer may support one or more LPARs for computing work. Many applications may be run or executed concurrently on an LPAR in a mainframe environment.
A mainframe computer installation (hereinafter “data center”) may divide processing capacity availability physically by central processor complexes (“CPCs”) and logically by logical partitions. Under common license arrangements (e.g. IBM's Monthly License Charge (MLC)), a mainframe customer may obtain a license to use a limited amount of processing capacity, for example, on one or more LPARs of the CPCs in a data center to run specific software products (e.g., DB2, CICS, WebSphere, Z/OS, IMS. etc.). The licensed processing capacity, which may be measured in terms of million service units (MSUs), may be a function of the individual LPAR, time of use, the individual software product used, etc. The licensed processing capacity may include a monthly maximum or total capacity limit for peak use across all CPCs and LPARs in a data center.
Under some license arrangements, the mainframe customer may obtain licensed processing capacity with a regional or country maximum capacity limit to run the software products (e.g., DB2, CICS, WebSphere, Z/OS, etc.) across all CPCs and LPARs in a plurality of data centers in a region or country.
Consideration is now being given to monitoring processing capacity use and managing distribution of the customer's computing workload across multiple data centers.